helping hands – shoe box time

It’s shoe box time. As our kids now go to an English school, they follow the English tradition of making shoe boxes for kids around the world who are less well off. As there is plenty of poverty in China, our school will be sending the shoe boxes to needy children in Beijing. The appeal comes with a basic wish list. where one can then add some additional items, but considering the weather here our wish list included mittens, hat and s scarf, tooth brush and toothpaste, crayons and a note book, bag of candy and some toy for the child. The hardest part was to find warm mittens and things without having to pay a fortune (a store nearby us had hats priced at $40 USD/25GBP which is just ridiculous when even the Target in US sometimes had those items in their dollar bins and their work fine unless it’s really – I should know as my son still happily wears his blue bear mittens).

As we moved not long ago I did a good spring clean and got rid of all the shoe boxes, so we used old gift bags instead. But I am thinking that it would have been hard to fit much stuff besides the clothing in a little shoe box! So here are our shoe boxes, but together with a lot of though and love from the kids, and their contents were done for kids to similar ages of their own. My guess is that some of you may recognize some items here from earlier posts – we ransacked my “gift reserves”, which included excess goody bag items from previous parties – such as the cute little tote bags, silly bands and creepy crawlers!

The kids also wanted to add their little “customised” present – so they created a crafting kit full of different materials. We are hoping that the kids who received these packages will have fun time with those, as families who struggle to even clothe and feed themselves most likely have never had money to buy supplies – and the kids very likely have not had a change to do much, if any, crafting before.

Tigger is a winner in the box of Master H. There is also a Lighting McQueen plate covered by creepy crawlers and play dough

The box of Miss C. Comes with a cuddly blanket and a pink unicorn. Added fun factor for a little girl from a pink wand and hair clips

The box of Miss A. for a girl between 6-9 years old. Main attraction build-a-bear set, cute little storage container and lots of stationary

one, two, three – our “shoe boxes” are ready to go to school for collection!